Search tips: Authors

Thanks to your numerous responses to our survey earlier in the spring, we have understood the most common challenges you have with the search syntax of INSPIRE. Thus, we have compiled the following suggestions for your searches – please try and let us know what you think.

If you wish to limit your search to papers only with/by a single author, you can do it by using the author count feature. For example, to find all articles with “a j ellis” as the sole author: find a j ellis and ac 1

Author count search also works when you want to limit the search to a range of number of authors, for example, from one to ten authors: find a j ellis and ac 1->10

You also had some questions on author searching as well. We would like to point out that the sophisticated SPIRES-style author searching also works in INSPIRE. For example, “j ellis” or “ellis, j” will give the same result. But the more precise you make your search, the more precise your results are. If you include a middle initial, results will be restricted to match only with records that also have the middle initial. Including the full given name will restrict the search to match only on the initial or the exact given name.

Another way to search for an author is using the Invenio syntax: author:”j ellis” (for further guidance on author search, check here).

To search for the exact name of an author as it appears in INSPIRE, use the following construction: find ea [familly name], [first name or initial]. For example: find ea ellis, j